Recently, it came to light that a certain fan site had copied
a Liverpool-related article almost word-for-word from another publication. It would
have been somehow less brazen if the replication had indeed been an exact one; instead,
the odd apostrophe was taken away here, the odd word added there, and the piece
passed off as an original. The article has since been taken down and the ‘writer’
sacked from the site in question, but the incident is indicative of a lazy pseudo-journalistic
culture in the internet age. It felt appropriate to use this, the 200th
piece of original content on my blog, to discuss some of the issues.
The internet is saturated with fan sites. The idea started
off as a very healthy one; supporters wanted to make content produced by people
with a passion for the club, to be read by others who shared this passion. Sure
enough, this proved very popular: the trailblazers of fan-produced content in
the online world quickly gained substantial followings. Somewhat inevitably, this
led to people realising that there was money to be made. New websites sprang
up, aggressively marketing their articles so as to generate as many clicks as
possible. Some of the content remained good, but it was no longer the priority –
the writing being produced became the means to an end, the end of generating
advertising revenue. Shady deals of mutual promotion were struck up between
Twitter accounts, and these upstart sites looked to establish a monopoly on
football content. The result was a race to the bottom: with everybody essentially
writing about broadly the same thing, that is to say the current issues
pertaining to Liverpool Football Club, the focus shifted from quality writing
to rapid publication. The best article, from the perspective of getting views,
is the fastest article.
In the worst cases, this has led to sites that shamelessly
click-bait and hardly even bother to proof-read articles. Young writers are enticed
with the promise of a ‘platform’ and made to meet deadlines that in many cases can
be highly demanding. Their writing style is often less than fully-developed;
even where they are good, the lack of editing exposes any mistakes that they do
make. It does not take long to bring multiple such publications to mind. This
in itself is damning, as it demonstrates that this ‘strategy’ has indeed
brought them to a position of prominence. However, the problem extends further:
even established national newspapers are feeling the pressure to be the first
past the post with their online content. Again, this is inherently
understandable; the first match report that goes up is bound to benefit from lots
of early clicks before rival journalism on the same game emerges. Such websites
have the expertise and self-respect that some of the newer sites lack, so the
writing is almost invariably less error-ridden, but there remains a lack of any
genuine insight. This is by no means a slight on the journalists: they are
under pressure to turn articles around on ridiculous timescales that make anything
more than surface-level analysis impossible. The few remaining bastions of
quality football journalism often reject the topical approach altogether,
somewhat removing themselves from the dogfight by instead producing long-form
writing on more niche topics – the world of match reports and interview
write-ups is no longer conducive to quality.
Given this context, it is surprising that it has taken this
long for a leading fan website to become embroiled in a plagiarism scandal. Fan
sites feel able to make fairly heavy content demands on their authors despite
usually paying them nothing of what they receive from advertising money; the
writers know that proofreading processes are lax and indifferent at best and
non-existent at worse, and think that they can get away with meeting their
quota for the week by ‘borrowing’ from elsewhere. This is, of course, unacceptable.
However, the culture in which the article was published is equally unacceptable:
the fan site that demanded another article be churned out for free but lacked
the due process to pick up on the plagiarism is just as culpable. It is hard to
see how it can be stopped. For many, myself included, the idea of one day
carving a career out of writing about sports is a dream: people will always be
willing to set aside their reservations and produce content for free, even
content that they can take no genuine pride in, if they consider it to be
furthering their chances of one day making a living from writing. The editors,
meanwhile, have no particular reason to get stricter on the content they
accept: a reputation for quality will of course do traffic no harm, but ultimately
it pales in comparison to the ability to produce lots of content quickly.
Does this mean football journalism is somehow doomed? Of
course not. The very success of these predatory football sites shows that the
appetite for sports content is as strong as ever, and there are undoubtedly
still plenty of excellent writers out there. However, without somehow
instigating a radical culture change, these writers will generally not be found
on the biggest sites: the best writing is getting buried under a mountain of clickbait
and plagiarism. Paywalls of some description might provide an answer of sorts –
this of course reduces overall readership, but it also reduces reliance on ad
revenues and shifts the focus on to quality content that people are prepared to
pay to read. The Tomkins Times is an example of this model in the Liverpool fanbase.
Further afield, Rory Smith of the New York Times is rightly considered to be
one of the best football writers today; it is little surprise that he is
working for a website requiring a subscription once a certain number of
articles per week has been reached. This is only very tentatively suggested as
a solution, and in an ideal world the great capacity of the Internet to share
quality content without barriers would be fully utilised in the context of football
journalism, but with the spectre of clicks and SEO looming over free-to-read
articles it is hard to see how such a model can encourage high journalistic
standards. In any case, it is clear that something needs to change.
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Follow me on Twitter @JamesMartin013
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